Infectious Diseases

This section of HealthSTATS provides information on the number of cases (incidence) and incidence rates of reportable diseases in Simcoe Muskoka and Ontario. Health units across Ontario maintain a constant surveillance of reportable diseases. These diseases are identified on Ontario's reportable diseases list (see Technical Notes below for more information). This is necessary to analyse disease trends, identify outbreaks, implement prevention strategies and make recommendations for controlling the disease.

Data are available for reportable diseases in Simcoe Muskoka found in the list below. Additional data for diseases preventable by routine childhood immunization, including measles, mumps, rubella, Haemophilus influenzae b (invasive), can be found in the immunization section.

The health unit produces routine reports on reportable diseases and hospital data which can be found on the Reports page.

The source of the Simcoe Muskoka data is the provincial reportable disease database called iPHIS. The sources of the Ontario data are iPHIS (2005-present) and the reportable disease database that preceded iPHIS called RDIS (2000-2004).

Ontario's Health Protection and Promotion Act requires that certain infectious diseases or suspected occurrences of these diseases be reported to local health units by health care providers, laboratories and administrators of institutions such as long-term care homes. Health units must report these diseases, known as reportable diseases, to the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC).These diseases are identified on Ontario's reportable diseases list. The MOHLTC has created a provincial case definition for each disease to ensure consistency across the province. These definitions can be found in Appendix B of the Infectious Diseases Protocol mandated by the Ontario Public Health Standards.

The number of cases of disease reported to the health unit may not reflect the true number of cases in the community. In order for a disease to be reported, the person with the disease must seek medical help, a health care professional must order the diagnostic test, the test result must be positive and a health care professional must report the positive result. Multiple factors affect each of these steps that prevent all cases from being reported. These factors must be considered when interpreting surveillance data.